


On beauty: a study by Greece and Turkey

by Helashotashades



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: And I’m not about to write underage shit, But I mean I do pull a dude looks like a lady, Fluff, Greece is not a little shit, Historical, Homicide, I swear, Just to be clear emotionally mature and boy are not mutually exclusive, M/M, Mild Angst, More accidental symbolism than I know what to do with, Name mindfuck, Of mama Greece bc it’s always her with these two idiots, Poor smitten turkey, Sculptor!Greece, Writer!Turkey, because someone has to be the emotionally mature one, but it’s not in a bad way this time, im sorry, its because of the damn historical, its just how they express their emotionally repressed selves, it’s basically impossible they’re both like over a millennia old, not a human AU at all, possible implied dubcon, there is no dubcon or underage, though it’s totes not meant to be taken that way, vaguely, well I mean homicide is bad but like it’s more forgivable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 13:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20046865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helashotashades/pseuds/Helashotashades
Summary: Turkey and Greece both love beautiful things, but their definitions of beauty are worlds apart.





	On beauty: a study by Greece and Turkey

Greece loves subtle flavor, depth, intensity.  Turkey fits this bill  nicely , masking all but the smallest details, but complexity abound in his manner, how his hands still twitch when there’s violence between the world powers, how his expression carries the slightest touch of pride as the EU rejects him yet again, and how he can hold so much passion, so much hope in the world— even with all the wars and all the deaths .  Turkey is by no means young, and his naïveté is not like America’s, but more like Russia’s childlike hope for world peace, the psychopathic desires to become the oppressive force forcing that world peace and all, though the desire has mellowed in recent years .  Turkey is like a familiar version of Russia, of Rome, of all the would-be conquerors of the world, straddling the line between too much and too little .  Greece likes to blame it on an Oedipus complex, as  blatantly false as he knows that premise is, but it was almost like he  was destined to fall . 

Turkey likes simple, sweet, delicate things. Greece isn’t exactly a simpleton, but he has a very straightforward list of what he likes and what he doesn’t. And Greece, contrary to popular belief, isn’t adverse to Turkey himself. He remains as unmoving as ever, demeanor always calm and kind until Turkey riles him up. Greece carries with him the air of an Ancient and Turkey can’t help but want to bend him at every chance.  He is not as firm as his mother, a fact that Turkey  shamelessly admits, especially seeing that Greece turns a lovely shade of purple when he mentions it .  Turkey doesn’t understand why, because as far as he’s concerned, blades ought to have some bend to them to withstand war . And love is war and war is love, isn’t it? 

When they met, Heracles was an aged Centurian, trapped in the body of a young child, and Turkey  was considered only a teenaged demigod, his immortality not yet rearing its ugly head . Heracles and his mother had been traipsing the dangerous road to China, and they’d  been held up by bandits. Arrogant ones, too.  They were hard to dispel, one, in particular, shrugging off rounds and rounds of arrows that should have at least broken skin .  His mother had been the one to stop the conflict, and through the shared country language, they determined that the ‘bandits’ had been but a few youth scouting for the fore of a royal caravan of their backwoods tribes .  Heracles had awoken from his sleep by the commotion, and as he’d peeked out from his perch in a litter, he’d caught sight of a teenage boy, tall and lanky,  flawlessly flawed, sculpted so  finely that for a second he wondered if his mother had misremembered the tale of Pygmalion .  He’d formed a small crush on him then, the kind of attraction that a child might carry for particularly pretty or smart and witty adult, the kind where the child would announce that they would marry the adult and the adult would cluck their tongue and laugh  fondly in response . Heracles pushed it to the very back of his mind as his mother returned with a blush painted across her cheeks. He had no desire to become a rival to his mother. 

When they met, well, when Sadik and Mother Greece  properly met, Sadik had  been awed at her. Mother Greece was many things— powerful, enviable, beautiful.  Mother Greece was the kind of woman a younger man might lust after but never think of approaching in a thousand years . Her manner was like that of silk covering steel, and her eyes....  well, Turkey could have (and had) waxed poetic about those eyes, not quite about their original owner, because Sadik had caught a glimpse of a beautiful nymph, with fine features, brown hair, and those lovely, lovely, green eyes, an improvement upon perfection . Her eyes were softer than her mother’s; still stern, but kinder and gentler.  He knew nothing of the girl, but even if she had had the temperament of a shrew, held an uncontrollable love of women, and a body like that of a wizened old crone, he had to have that girl .  He made that much clear to Mother Greece, and she had looked at him with fury in her eye, and spat, ‘Over my dead body will you take my son!’ Sadik— Göktürk?  was weak then, so he had left to tell the Khagan that it had  been discovered that the newly-formed Khanate has a personification— a sign that they had had a good chance of winning this war with the East . 

It takes the better part of a millennium, a lot of change in management, and a  surprisingly long time spent as a mercenary for the Persians and one particularly memorable change of religion to even get close to that land of milk and honey .  The Sultanate of Rum was particularly happy to secede from them,  partially because he hadn’t appreciated  being used for the better part of a century, but  mostly because they kept trying for peace .  Rum had his uses, building ties with the Northern brother, but Sadik shrugs off that mask for the literal one Osman presents him with, all the better for staying unrecognized as the country .  It takes two Mehmeds to see the Empire’s dreams come to fruition, although only ever Osman  was informed of this unholy desire possessing their country .  It was with great relish, then, that the newly-named Ottoman Empire claimed Greece for himself over his mother’s dead body . 

Heracles spends the better part of a millennium watching his mother fade.  Her sanity disappears with the loss of her precious pantheon, when she  is forced to convert to Christianity as the last worshippers of the old gods  are hunted down and slaughtered  brutally .  Even though she looks normal, she walks and talks like she always did, and gives advice worthy of her namesake, Heracles knows .  She lets Rome into her bedchamber instead of Heracles,  slavishly ,  mindlessly follows orders from their rulers, but agrees to the split with Rome with a demented gleam in her eye .  She is less controlled, angrier, spends time on the battlefield killing and torturing people herself .  All the same, Heracles watches the east with trepidation, both for the security of their borders against the Arabs, and, if he will admit it to himself, admiration for the bloody swath that the Seljuks cut through the land .  It is only fitting, then, that when the Ottoman Empire brings his scimitar down on Heracles’s mother’s neck, he feels nothing but relief . His mother had suffered, been suffering for so long.  Heracles had  been worried that she would have a public execution, impaled on one of those poles that the Ottoman Empire was so fond of . So when the Empire sweeps him up and growls, “Mine.”, into his ear, Greece clings to him and replies, “Yours.” 

Later, though, much later, when Turkey was too exhausted from war to notice, Greece spent far, far too much time trying to capture his  messily spiked hair, the exact size of his nose, and the gentle slope of his forehead, relaxed in sleep .  The bust was cheap plaster because Greece has standards, and the second Turkey noticed his stained fingers (in the middle of bending him over at his improvised workbench, no less), the bust was in pieces . The literal second. Greece had feigned a slip and smashed the bust as hard as he could against the wall with his foot. Turkey never mentioned it again, and Greece breathed a sigh of relief.  Greece, after winning his War of Independence, had destroyed a finished full-body sculpture, riding on adrenaline and this newfound feeling of freedom .  Few know of the sculpture’s destruction, and only one knows that the sculpture smashed with Mount Athens was the rough draft .  The real one, the sculpture that makes Greece want to replace the Ganymede statue in his small, small, private shrine to the original gods of his people with Turkey’s serene face,  is hidden inside a wall of the  barely restored temple ruins he calls his home . The builder who had helped him seal the plaster away in concrete, bless her soul, had taken one look at it and nodded. 

Turkey remembers how Greece was  unfailingly polite in his house, despite how Ottoman had murdered his mother— she was old, and in pain, and Ottoman respected her as a proud warrior— so he looked to her and she looked to him and there had been surprising pride and love in those eyes . And then Ottoman had tried to see if she’d bend, knowing she’d break. But it is under Ottoman’s care, unlike Greece’s own mother’s, that the boy grew fast and strong and beautiful.  And it was not a sin to lie with him, not  really , because he was a slave of war, and Ottoman could do as he wished, though the thing that he  truly wished was to marry (and that was the forbidden thing now, the thing he’d sacrificed to see those beautiful, beautiful eyes every night).  He’d written pages upon pages of poetry on his love, spent years poring over words and combinations and— yet, when the young man asked him, “Do you  truly love me?”, eyes deadly serious, Ottoman could only shrug and smirk and offer up a pathetic, “ Perhaps .”, before proceeding to beat the shit out of him .  That, too, is his response when Egypt asks about the epic of the merchant and the green-eyed mermaid, asks, deadpan, “Turkey, you son of a dog, I hate you more than Greece does, but you tell good stories . Tell me the end of this one, and you won’t go home in a cardboard box.“ 

But the thing both of them can agree on is that after they  are done writhing against each other, when they  are curled around each other basking in the glow of contentment, when Turkey does not aggravate Greece, that is beautiful .  When Greece looks into Turkey’s eyes, all he sees is serenity, missing that spark of bloodlust, and he thinks that  perhaps he should repair the statue’s eyes to look like this .  When Turkey looks into Greece’s eyes, they are alight with love and fire and happiness, and he muses on his epic and wonders if he should add illustrations, because for once in his life, his words fail him .

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Thanks for reading and please comment! I know I’m a shit writer so I would appreciate any criticism!


End file.
